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Food truck operator Nizar Ku and friends created a “fund-a-meal” program to provide fresh, hot meals to those in need. They started delivering food to front-line medical workers but quickly shifted to feeding daily wage earners most affected by the lockdown, including Rohingya refugees, who often have no official status and find it hard to ask authorities for help.
As president of the El Pasoans Fighting Hunger Food Bank (EPFH), Stuart Schwartz '76 has been fighting an uphill battle to get food to everyone who needs it. The COVID-19 crisis has led to a dramatic increase in food insecurity, and Schwartz and his team are working tirelessly amid staffing, supply and distribution challenges so that no one goes hungry during the pandemic.
An organization run by Northwestern students is working hard to keep Evanston’s small business owners afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic. Helped by a $100,000 contribution from the city of Evanston, Lending for Evanston and Northwestern Development (LEND) is offering no-interest loans of up to $5,000 to entrepreneurs hit hard by the crisis.
After a long road to Northwestern, sociology professor and inequality expert Beth Redbird is leading a national survey to assess the social impact of COVID-19. She and her interdisciplinary team are examining how we think, feel and behave in response to the global pandemic.
Desmond Wang reached out to alumni affiliated with the NU Club of Beijing to launch a fundraiser. In less than two weeks, Wang led an international effort that resulted in the donation of more than 5,500 N95 masks and two iPads to Northwestern Memorial Hospital — and a contribution of nearly $14,000 to Northwestern Medicine’s COVID-19 Relief Fund to give the hospital flexibility as its needs evolve.
On a Saturday afternoon in late March, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Genevieve Thiers ’04 MMus opens the balcony doors of her home in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. She sets her iPhone on a music stand and cues up the app that will be her accompaniment.
Jasmine Warga ’10 won a John Newbery Honor in January for her recent book "Other Words from Home," a story about a 12-year-old Syrian refugee named Jude who lives in Ohio with her mother while her father and brother remain in Syria. The award-winning young adult author shares how her family’s immigrant background shapes her writing.
Kristen Schaal ’00 makes an indelible impression. Her sweet, singsong and slightly manic voice belies the many comically subversive roles she has played, but no matter how sly her portrayals, you always feel like Schaal is letting you in on the joke.
Amy Rosenzweig picks up a Rubik’s Cube–like paperweight with a colorful, spiral structure printed on one side. “This side commemorates that I determined the complicated structure of a protein in graduate school, which ended up launching my career in chemistry,” says Rosenzweig, who holds joint appointments in chemistry and molecular biosciences in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
In 1976, with the nation’s bicentennial as a backdrop, Edgar Toppin ’55 PhD, president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), worked with President Gerald Ford to establish the country’s first Black History Month.